


Twisted up in Golden Strands [Fic & Podfic]

by RsCreighton, samyazaz, SomethingIncorporeal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, F/F, Fairy Tale Retellings, Podfic, Podfic Length: 1.5-2 Hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-02 18:25:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11514936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton, https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/pseuds/samyazaz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomethingIncorporeal/pseuds/SomethingIncorporeal
Summary: It starts like this: with Enjolras's father, drunk and desperate that his only daughter marry before she becomes a spinster, accosting a wealthy-looking stranger at the market and directing his attention to her.With a thoughtless boast, her father crying, "Look at her there in the sunlight, look at her hair, see how she turns straw into gold? Isn't she beautiful?", too loud and too bold for the crowded marketplace.With a knock at the door, some days later, and a man in the king's livery standing at attention on the other side, reading a decree, and the sudden sense that the world has dropped out from under Enjolras's feet.





	Twisted up in Golden Strands [Fic & Podfic]

  
**Title:**  Twisted Up in Golden Strands  
**Length:**  1:50:22  
**Format:**   MP3 & Streaming  
**Cover Artist:**   WingedWords

  
[**Mobile Streaming**](http://rscreighton.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/201708/Podtogether/%5bLes%20Mis%5d%20Twisted%20Up%20In%20Golden%20Strands.mp3)  


[**Download File (MP3)**](http://rscreighton.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/201708/Podtogether/%5bLes%20Mis%5d%20Twisted%20Up%20In%20Golden%20Strands.mp3)  


[**Download File (M4B)**](http://rscreighton.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/201708/Podtogether/%5bLes%20Mis%5d%20Twisted%20Up%20in%20Golden%20Strands.m4b)  
_(Right-Click, Save. THANK YOU, PARAKA!_

It starts like this: with Enjolras's father, drunk and desperate that his only daughter marry before she becomes a spinster, accosting a wealthy-looking stranger at the market and directing his attention to her.

With a thoughtless boast, her father crying, "Look at her there in the sunlight, look at her hair, see how she turns straw into gold? Isn't she beautiful?", too loud and too bold for the crowded marketplace.

With a knock at the door, some days later, and a man in the king's livery standing at attention on the other side, reading a decree, and the sudden sense that the world has dropped out from under Enjolras's feet.

*

The palace is very grand, full of towering ceilings and glittering chandeliers and gilt on all the trim. Enjolras stands in the receiving chamber where she's been summoned, trying not to shake with the anger inside her, and trying to remember to breathe, slow and careful.

The king himself has has received them, and he paces a circle around Enjolras, looking her over from every angle. She feels like a calf waiting to be bought at market, and it makes her fury surge and her hands tremble. He's very close as he walks around her, hmming and muttering little comments to himself like she can't hear him appraising her, far closer than most commoners would ever see their king, and she thinks if she threw herself at him, she could almost certainly scratch up his face before the guards at the door made it across the room.

The king finishes his perusal and comes to stand before them both, his chin high and his shoulders thrown back like he expects the sheer weight of his presence to drop them to their knees. Enjolras's father quells beneath it, sinking down into a bow.

Enjolras does not.

It makes the king frown at her, and that's just as well. Let him disapprove. Maybe he'll decide she's unsuitable and leave her be. Her father will probably despair for months at having his only daughter rejected by the king himself, but Enjolras would take it for a blessing.

"We have heard tale of the miraculous feats you claim to be capable of," the king says, his voice booming as though he's addressing an audience of hundreds, instead of just the two of them. The anger simmering deep within Enjolras makes her lip curl with distaste. Her father would scold her for such an unladylike expression, but her father has eyes for no one but the king. "You will demonstrate them for us."

"I will _not_ ," Enjolras says, at the same time that her father tries to stammer out a protest.

The king silences him with a look. "Have the tales been false, then? Would you tell me that my most trusted and loyal courtiers have spoken lies before their king?"

Her father is quiet, his face gone red as a tomato. He could explain the mistake to the king and risk his wrath -- but he will not, that much is obvious. Enjolras wonders if the guards would bother to stop her if she clawed at _his_ face.

The king takes a step toward him, menacing. Her father shrinks even lower, his eyes gone wide with fear. When the king speaks, his voice has gone low and soft, as ominous as the whisper of a snake sliding through the grass. "Tell me, good sir. Did you or did you not claim in the marketplace that your daughter can turn straw into gold?"

Her father's throat works in silence for a moment, his eyes growing wider and his face redder. "I-- I-- I did say that, sire, but you must understand--"

"Then we will put your claims to the test." The king waves a hand over his shoulder and the guards come forward from the door. Enjolras jerks away when they reach for her, but it's a futile protest. They take her by the arms easily enough, and are unmoved when she fights against their grip. "And if you are lying, good sir, then we shall put you both to death in the morning."

Enjolras curses and struggles harder for her freedom, while all the red drains from her father's face, leaving him pale as bone.

"S-sire," her father gasps. "You must allow me a moment to-- to bid good-bye to my daughter."

"Must I?" The king casts a cool look upon him. "You shall see her again in the morning, if you spoke the truth."

Her father's throat works in silence for a moment. "Please," he begs, his voice gone thin and thready. "Take pity on a doting father, sire. We haven't spent a night apart since the day she was born. Please, allow me just one moment to say good-bye in private."

It's another lie, but the king looks down on her father for several moments, unmoved, before he sighs like they're both a terrible inconvenience and flicks his hands at the guards. "Very well. See her to the chamber, and allow him his moment. Then see him escorted out of the palace."

The guards tighten their hold on Enjolras's arms and lead her away. Her father trails behind, saying all the things she supposes he must think a doting father would say, though every word rings false to her familiar ears. She endures it -- what else is to be done? -- and she is brought to a small, close room, without any windows and only the one solid door. It looks more like a cell than a chamber, except that within it, there is a mount of straw as high as her waist, and a spinning wheel, and a stool upon which to sit, and little more. At least a cell would have been furnished with a pallet upon which to sleep.

She almost laughs. When she turns to protest the absurdity of the task set before her, the guards are flanking the door, looking impassive.

"One minute," the guard tells her father warningly. "Then it's off with you, whether you've said your peace or not."

The door sounds like thunder as it slams closed.

Enjolras wheels about to face her father. "You could tell him the truth," she spits, venomous from all the rage left to fester inside her.

Her father looks as betrayed as if she'd slapped him. "He'll kill me."

"He'll kill us both in the morning, when this straw is no closer to being gold than you are to being a courtier."

"No. Listen, child." He clutches at her hands with renewed urgency. "He liked your beauty well enough--"

"He liked your _boasting_ , not my face."

"--or he'd not have entertained this notion. Forget the straw, you've better talents than the one he thinks he wants from you. Seduce him, child, and you'll save us both."

A frigid cold washes through Enjolras. She snatches her hands from her father's and stares at him. "I will not trade myself to spare you the consequences of your lie."

He spins away from her, scoffing. "Would you do it to spare yourself, then, if you have no care for your poor father?"

_No_ , Enjolras thinks. _Never_. But she's prevented from answering by the chamber door opening, spilling light across the floor. The guards look in, expectant, impatient.

"Well?" They look to her father. "Have you said your good-byes, then?"

"No, please," her father begs, coming forward to clutch at a guard's hand in supplication. "Just one moment more, I beg of you. The king will never know. Just one more minute with my only daughter--"

"He's done," Enjolras says coldly, and doesn't flinch when her father turns a glare on her, where the guards cannot see. "You may escort him home. I have a great deal of work to do, after all."

Her father calls for her as they lead him away, trying to implore her without giving away the lie to the king's guards. Enjolras stays, standing tall and straight and unmoved, until the door has shut behind them and the sounds of her father entreating the guards for pity have faded away, and there's only silence beyond the door.

She turns, then, her breath coming out of her hard and fast, and kicks the loose straw away from the corners of the room so she can drop to her knees and feel along the stones, searching for loose masonry, a crack, _anything._

She spends an hour searching the walls, and when that turns up nothing, turns her attention to the door. It's heavy, and barred well. It's as solid as the walls when she tries to throw her weight against it, and they were clever enough to put her in a room where the hinges lie on the outside, rather than within. Still, she thinks if perhaps she could find a tool thin enough, she could work it through the narrow gap between door and wall and unpin the hinges from within.

The individual strands of straw are too delicate, bending and breaking far too easily to be any use, and she sits cross-legged on the floor for a time plaiting straw together to see if it will give them strength, but quickly finds that she can't craft a braid that's sturdy without also making it too thick to fit through the space.

She leaves the braids discarded on the floor and clears space around the spinning wheel, instead, so she can walk around it and inspect its parts. She settles on the footman with its thin metal hooks as the most likely to be of use to her, and settles down to her knees on the floor to start disassembling the wheel so she can get it free.

She's just trying to figure out how best to apply leverage to the hook to straighten it out when there's a sound behind her, too quiet to be the door being unbarred and opened, but more like someone outside leaned a hand against it as they passed by. She glances over her shoulder all the same, instinctive, and jumps when she sees another woman in the chamber, watching what she's doing with a pinched frown between her brows.

"Who are you?" Enjolras demands. "How did you get in here?" And, more importantly -- could Enjolras leave by the same way?

The other woman spares her little more than a glance as she comes forward, peering at the spinning wheel. Her feet are bare and the hem of her skirt is ragged and her hair has been cut almost as short as a man's, then left to curl wildly about her face. She crouches down in the straw beside Enjolras and reaches out to touch the mangled footman lying on the floor in front of Enjolras. "What are you doing?"

" _Leaving_ ," Enjolras says violently, and snatches the footman up into her hands.

The stranger watches her without comment as Enjolras crosses the room and starts trying to work the footman through the gap in the door, to the hinges beyond. It's hard work, and frustrating, and night is creeping ever onward, and so some time later, when Enjolras is sure that she's accomplished nothing but to waste what little time she has before the king returns expecting a miracle, she throws the footman down with a hiss and spins, demanding, "What do you want?"

The stranger just raises an eyebrow at her. She looks thoroughly unimpressed. "What do _you_ want?" she asks.

Enjolras breathes hard for a moment, fury boiling up within her. But this strange woman isn't the one who boasted that Enjolras could do the impossible, she isn't the one who demanded it of her or who refused to admit his mistake to the king. And she got in here _somehow_. She might be the only means Enjolras has of escaping this bedamned chamber before the king returns and has her executed for not being able to do the impossible.

Enjolras nearly answers her, _To go home_ , but then bites the words back. Home is where her father is, home is the first place the king would look for her when he discovered her escape. And it's not what she wants, either, not really. So she says, slower and more honest, "Freedom."

The strange woman hums like she's considering the request. "Why have they locked you in here? Are you a criminal?" Her eyes spark like that might be the best possible thing she can think of for Enjolras to be.

"No. Just the daughter of a fool." Enjolras moves away from the door and comes over to, to stand in front of her. "You got in here somehow. You must be able to leave by the same way. Are you going to show me how to follow you? He'll have me executed if I'm still here come morning."

The stranger eyes her sidelong, a smile curling up the corners of her mouth. "Yet you claim you're not a criminal."

"I'm _not_ , I—" Enjolras sucks in air through her teeth when her harsh words only make the other woman's smile grow. She's _goading_ her, and Enjolras doesn't have the luxury of unleashing her temper. "He thinks I can turn straw into gold."

That, at least, makes the woman's amused expression fall away, replaced by genuine surprise. "Why on earth would he think that?"

Enjolras sighs, exhausted all at once, and drops down onto the stool. "My father," she says, low and grim.

"Ah," the woman says. "The fool."

It startles a laugh out of Enjolras. "The very same."

The woman hums again, and paces around the room. She stops to pick up the footman Enjolras had discarded, and lets her circuit bring her back to where she started, standing before Enjolras. She considers the mangled footman with a dubious expression, one eyebrow lifted high. "So," she says. "The king sets you to spinning, and you begin by destroying your wheel. That seems a logical first step, I suppose."

"He'll kill me when it's not done. I was trying to escape."

The woman glances around, at the walls that still surround them, at the door that remains barred. "I see that worked out well for you."

Enjolras presses her lips together and bites back her anger. "I was interrupted."

The woman shifts her weight back, hips cocked, head tipped to an angle like a curious dog trying to figure out what she makes of Enjolras.

It's not an unfamiliar expression. Enjolras has grown used to people not knowing what to make of her.

"Well, then," the woman says. "I suppose the polite thing to do is to leave."

And Enjolras is angry enough to be bold and desperate enough to be ruthless, to push up off the stool so she can grasp the woman by the wrist and snap, "Not without me, you aren't."

Strangely, it makes something settle in the woman's expression. The set of her shoulders eases, and that infuriating smile flirts with the corners of her mouth again. "It doesn't really work that way, I'm afraid," she says gently, and then, brisk and bright, "I suppose we'll just have to get your spinning done, then, won't we?"

It makes Enjolras blink at her, nonplussed. "The straw," she says flatly.

"We're not exactly flush for options, I'm afraid." She moves around the wheel and settles down on the floor behind it in a billow of her tattered skirts, and lifts the footman to inspect its hooks, twisted all out of shape. She gives a low whistle. "You did a number on this. What have you got against spinning wheels, anyway?"

Enjolras drops back onto the stool with a scowl. "Nothing, particularly."

"Well, you wouldn't know it from this. No matter. I think we can fix it well enough." She takes the piece of metal between her fingers and twists it.

It bends as easy as a piece of twine beneath her touch, though it had taken Enjolras a quarter-hour and some clever applications of leverage to straighten it out in the first place, and when she holds it out to look it over, it's formed into a perfect, pristine hook, as though Enjolras had never touched it.

"There," the woman says with satisfaction. "I think that'll do." And she sets to returning it to its rightful place, hooked about the wheel's hub and lashed to the treadle.

"Push on that for me," she says a moment later, looking up with her brow creased with concentration. When Enjolras steps on the treadle, the wheel spins smooth and almost silent, and the woman's face goes a little fractured and fey, viewed between the wheel's stuttering spokes.

Enjolras blinks and the impression vanishes. The woman just looks like herself again, and she grunts a little as she pushes herself up off the floor and onto her feet. "All right, that should do it. You're in my seat, if you don't mind."

Enjolras lifts her brows, but moves, and the woman settles onto the stool and hitches her skirts up around her knees. She gives a push of her foot upon the treadle and watches the wheel spin for a moment before nodding to herself, reaching down to grab a handful of the loose straw from the floor, and settling it in her grip.

Enjolras watches, frowning, as she twists the end of the first piece of straw between her fingertips, the way one would with wool one was preparing to spin. But this is _straw_ , and it can't be done, it can't be spun at all, much less into—

The straw reels off of her fingers, as easy as the finest wool, and where it wraps around the bobbin it glimmers, lustrous and golden.

Enjolras sucks in a sharp breath, then quickly scrambles about the room, scooping up the straw that she's scattered during the course of her imprisonment and building a neat pile of it at the woman's side.

When her hand is empty she pauses her treadling, reaching out to stop the wheel, and glances down at the mound of straw beside her. Her lips quirk, and she finds Enjolras's gaze across the room. "You know," she says lightly, "you make a terrible distaff."

"Is that what I am now?" Enjolras asks, sharp. But she unfolds from where she's been sitting, watching the layers of glistening gold build upon the bobbin, and comes over to sit instead at the woman's side, where she can gather up the straw before her and have it ready for the woman to take, when she needs it. "You know," she says carefully, as the woman turns the wheel and it begins to hum again, and gold thread spills from her fingertips as easy as flax. "You might tell me your name, if you're going to save my life."

The woman hums a thoughtful, considering sound. When Enjolras looks up, she's frowning down at her like she's trying to take her measure, though her hands still move with practiced ease, feeding thread through the flyer. "Call me R," she says at length.

And Enjolras would frown, because that's not a _name_ , is it? But she remembers the way the woman's face had looked through the spinning spokes of the wheel, like her eyes were bottomless forest pools, and she looks at the way the thread glints as it comes off of her fingers, and she thinks, _Names are powerful things. Take what you're given, and take it for the gift it is._ And also, _Don't risk her wrath before she's finished saving your life, you halfwit._ And so she swallows her protests and says only, "Enjolras," and passes another bundle of straw into her grasp.

"Charmed," R says, droll, sparing her a glance. "I'm sure."

She pushes down firmly on the treadle, setting the wheel spinning faster, and turns her attention back to the work. And for a time they settle into a steady rhythm, the only sound between them the hum of the wheel and the whisper of the straw as it passes from Enjolras's hand to R's.

*

When the bobbin is full, R stops her spinning and stretches her back out, and Enjolras is a daughter of the working class, she knows well what to do with a bobbin full of thread.

She was given no reel to wind it off on, and she sniffs a little in disapproval. The king either knew she'd fail at her task, or knew next to nothing about what was actually involved in the work of spinning. Still, she can manage well enough with her outstretched arms, the way she used to as a child at her mother's knee.

It's the work of a few moments to wind the thread around her arms, though by the end of it her muscles ache with the weight of the gold. From there, it's just a few twists and a practiced movement and they have a finished hank of thread, heavy in her hand and shining bright. Enjolras looks at it and thinks, _This is worth more than my family earns in a year._

R is waiting expectantly, her brows lifted, so Enjolras shakes off the thought and sets the hank aside, and returns to her place at R's side, ready to hand her the next bundle of straw. Still, though, while she has a moment and R's attention isn't preoccupied with the task at hand, she asks, soft and frowning, "Why are you helping me?"

R's gaze on her feels like a weight, and Enjolras suddenly doesn't have the nerve to look up and see what expression she's wearing. "You said I wasn't leaving without you," she says at length.

It makes Enjolras laugh, harsh and unpleasant. "You could have done so anyway. You still could."

R is silent for a long moment. "Well. Call it pity, then, if you like. Are you going to hand me that, or sit there holding it all night?"

Enjolras startles and passes it over, and they settle once more into the steady rhythm of the spinning.

It's very late and Enjolras is struggling to remain awake when they finish the spinning and the last hank of gold thread is twisted up and settled on the pile that has grown against the wall. She drops down onto the floor beside them, leaning her head back against the hard stone wall and considers just falling asleep right there. "Thank you," she manages, before she forgets, and hears the sounds of R moving around the room, her steps quiet in her bare feet.

"Are you going to do something foolish if I try to leave now?" R asks, her words wry but not unamused.

Enjolras doesn't bother to open her eyes. "I'm too tired for foolishness."

"Well, then." The whisper of R's steps grows near. There's the sigh of cloth, and then R's fingers wrapped carefully around Enjolras's wrist. Enjolras opens her eyes and looks at her, kneeling in front of her, very close. Her eyes are very dark and very deep, and Enjolras doesn't feel any less likely to drown in them for having spent the night in her company. "Something to remember me by," R says, and winks.

Enjolras looks down, and there around her wrist is the braided straw she'd made and abandoned all those hours ago, turned now to a bracelet of solid gold.

When she looks up — startled and choking on gratitude that feels wholly insufficient — R has vanished. All that's left in the room is Enjolras, and the wheel, and the gold thread piled up at her side.

*

She wakes abruptly to the impossibly loud sound of the door being unbarred. She considers getting to her feet, but she'd only just managed to fall asleep, and she's so tired, and she's still so angry. So she tugs her sleeve down to cover R's bracelet, and tucks her skirts around her legs, and waits.

The light that falls through the door as it opens is near-blinding, but she refuses to flinch from it. She stays seated as the king and his guards stride in, and she sees the moment the king realizes what's been done. The haughty disdain falls from his face, leaving it bare and startled for just a moment before he closes it off again and addresses her directly.

"You did this?" he demands, and doesn't even remember to chide her for not rising to her feet before her king.

She takes up one of the bundles of thread and tosses it to him. He catches it and makes a low, shocked sound. "It's what you asked of me."

"How?" He comes closer, his eyes shining with avarice. "You must tell me--"

Enjolras gets to her feet with a groan. "Beg pardon, your Highness"--it's a slight, the proper form of address for a prince rather than a king, but she's too tired to worry about the consequences--"but I've been working all night at your behest. And I've done as you bid. So I'll be going home now."

He flowers at her, but the deal was made and the guards there to attest to it. And his gaze keeps sliding back to the hanks of gold, anyway, so after a moment he waves his hand distractedly at her and mutters, "Yes, yes. Guards, see her home," and then he only has eyes for the gold.

"I can see myself there," she tells the guards when they trail after her out of the chamber. "I know the way."

"Orders, miss," one says impassively, and she sighs, and leads the way.

Her father is, at first, shocked to see her, and then swiftly suspicious. He watches her with a narrowed gaze as the guards take their leave, and once they've gone, snatches her by the arm. "Did you do as I told you?" he demands. "I never thought you'd have the sense for if, but—"

Enjolras pulls her arms from his grip. "I did not."

He breaks off and stares at her anew. "But how—"

"I have my life, and you yours. Be content with that," she says, and breezes past him into the house.

*

She has a week to think it's over, a week to fall back into the rhythms of her life, to set from her mind the memory dark eyes gazing at her through a spinning wheel's spokes, to lie in bed at night and wrap her hand around the braided bracelet around her wrist and feel her heart thump in her chest and wonder why. And then she's walking home from the Houcheloup farm, where she brought a sack of flour to trade for some eggs, when she comes over the little rise before their mill and stops in her tracks at the sight of men in glinting armor standing before their front door.

They see her before she can even think to turn and flee. She sets down the box of eggs, afraid her trembling hands might drop it, and pulls automatically at her sleeve to ensure the bracelet is well-hidden.

"Mistress," the guards greet her, and sketch a hint of a bow, which leaves her nonplussed and frowning. "The king requests an audience."

She breathes carefully, deliberately. "You may tell the king I'm indisposed," she says, with all the dignity she can muster, and picks the eggs back up.

"Ah." The guard nearest to her clears his throat. "It's not really that sort of a request."

And so she comes to the palace again, and is brought before the king, and the moment the doors to the audience chamber close, she strides forward and demands, "Have I not done enough for you already?"

The king surveys her coolly, and doesn't deign to reply. "We have given your thread to our alchemists for study," he says, once again like he's giving a proclamation to a full court, not a mostly-empty audience hall with only Enjolras and the few guards who stand by the doors, eyeing her carefully, to hear. "And they have determined the truth of your claim, and verified that the thread is indeed made of gold."

She wants to laugh and demand, _What did you think I'd done, spun straw into twine and then cleverly disguised it?_ She wants to spin on her heel and run, but the guards at the door bar the way. She wants to hurl herself at the king, but she values her life too much for such foolishness.

The king watches her, still aloof and cold, like he's waiting for a reaction, though she can't imagine what he expects of her. She doesn't give it to him — what more is there for her to say? — and eventually his expression goes hard. "As a service to your king and your country," he says, "you will ply your skills at the wheel a second time, and generously bestow the product of your work upon the kingdom's coffers."

Her head swims with the implication of what he says, what he wants from her. "Wait," she gasps, even as the king gestures beyond her and the guards' approach her from behind. "There's been a misunderstanding—"

The king's expression is unyielding as she's ever seen it. "You have proven yourself capable of this task once already," he says, and now there's an edge to his voice, whetted sharp as a blade. "Even the lowest fishmonger must tithe to his king, for the good of the land. If you refuse, your disloyalty shall be dealt with appropriately."

The punishment for disloyalty to king and crown is, of course, death. Enjolras shuts her eyes and doesn't fight when the guards grip her by the arms. "Please," she says, though it costs her something to beg before him. "Allow me to explain."

"Your actions shall prove explanation enough. Either you are a loyal citizen, or you are not." He gestures again. The hands on her tighten, dragging her away.

She's gone numb by the time they throw her into the chamber that has been prepared for her. It's a different one than the first, larger, with the same wheel sitting in the corner, the same stool behind it. But where there had been one mount of straw before, now there is half a dozen, and Enjolras drops to her knees in the middle of the chamber and laughs, delirious and despairing.

The guards move to leave her there, but she turns and catches one by the wrist before he can go. He stiffens, his other hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. "Tell the king," she says, and makes her voice demanding, unyielding, "that if he wishes me to do a week's work in a single evening, then he will provide me with the tools necessary for my trade."

The guard frowns and glances past her, to the corner. "You have the wheel, don't you?" he demands, gruff.

"I require a reel, and a second bobbin, and a pot of grease." It's pointless. She can't do what he wants of her, but she has had enough of being ordered about by tyrants. It gives her some small sense of satisfaction to be able to turn the tables and send the king scrambling about at her behest.

It's not much, when she'll die in the morning, but it's all she has.

The guards return within the hour with all the items she demanded. She makes a show of setting up the reel near the stool and greasing the wheel and the spindle, until everything turns smoothly and it hums along almost silently.

She looks up when she's satisfied and pretends to be surprised to find the guards still there, watching her with a frown. "Well?" she says. "Go on. I've a great deal of work to do, and I won't be disturbed."

She knows better than to think she'll be able to talk her way out this time, and she'd rather be alone, so she can abandon pretense. The guards startle like they've been caught out, give a brief bow, and then leave. She listens, hears the bar settle across the door from the outside, and sighs. She rises from the stool and moves away from the wheel, dropping down instead to sit on the floor, leaning back against one of the straw piles. It's not much, as bedding goes, but it's more comfortable than the unyielding stool.

She shuts her eyes, and considers her options. She could wait until morning and try to run the moment the doors opened, before they realized she had failed at her task. She could use the lamp left to her to set the straw afire, though she'd surely die in the blaze before anyone took enough notice to unbar the door. She could use the straw to spell out a rude message across the floor, one final display of defiance for when the king comes to see her work in the morning, though she'd prefer a fate that didn't end with her being led to the executioner's block.

"Honestly, how do you keep getting yourself into these messes?"

Enjolras bolts upright, her eyes opening. R is crouching in front of her, one brow raised, her mouth pulled into a crooked grin. Enjolras loses all her breath at the sight of her, and only manages to answer her with a faint, "It's at least half your fault, you know."

R's brows lift higher, and she laughs. "Oh, do tell."

Enjolras picks herself up off the ground, onto her feet. As she does so, R straightens so she's standing as well, though she's considerably shorter than Enjolras even at her full height. "He liked your work too well." She gestures around her, at the piles of straw surrounding them. "He demanded more."

R huffs a quiet laugh and walks around the room, looking over the amount of straw that's been left this time. "He could have funded an army on what we left last time. With this...he could buy a second kingdom to call his own."

"I don't suppose anyone has ever accused a king of being frugal." And not _their_ king, certainly.

R turns to flash a grin at Enjolras over her shoulder. "No, I don't suppose they have." She takes up a handful of straw from the top of one of the piles and lets it slip through her fingers, scattering back onto the mound. "I can't say I relish the thought of encouraging him."

"Can't we just go?" Enjolras asks, plaintive, hands curling at her sides. "I don't give a damn about his gold. I just want to go."

The smile that R turns on her is full of sadness. "I think I said last time. It doesn't work that way." She stretches a hand out, presses it against the stone wall before her. After an instant, the stone gives way beneath her palm like thickened pudding, slowly swallowing it up to the wrist. When she pulls her hand back out, the stone underneath looks entirely undisturbed. Enjolras makes a breathless sort of punched-out noise and reaches out to grab onto the wheel to steady herself, because there's knowing there's something fey about the woman, and then there's _seeing_ her pass through thick stone as though it isn't even there. "Human walls can't hold me. But I can't take you with me."

Disappointment drops like a stone into Enjolras's gut. "You can't open the door?"

"I could, maybe. But then we'd have the guards stationed outside to contend with, and I don't like our odds against their swords. Walls may not be able to hold me, but your iron still bites."

Enjolras swallows against the thickness in her throat. "He'll kill me when I fail," she says softly and hates herself a little for it, because she doesn't care for the idea of giving the king what he wants either, but she values her life too well to be principled about it.

R turns and looks at her and there's something sharp and bright in her gaze, though it gentles almost at once. "Well," she says softly. "We can't have that."

And just like that, she moves to the wheel and settles herself onto the stool. One of her eyebrows quirks up as she takes in the tools that hadn't been there before, the reel and the spare bobbin. "You're prepared, I see," she says, laughter lurking like music in her voice.

Enjolras flushes, the heat of it burning across her cheeks. "I didn't expect you to save me a second time. I only wanted the satisfaction of seeing him scramble about at errands at my behest, for once."

It makes R laugh, a full-bodied belly laugh that seems to shake the room, and has Enjolras smiling helplessly at the pure, joyous sound of it. "Oh, I wish I had been there to see his face." She beckons out with one hand and Enjolras is at her side in an instant, a bundle of straw in her hands, passing it over as easily as though they'd practiced it for months, and not a single evening a week earlier.

They work in easy silence together for a time, until the bobbin's full and R brings the wheel to a stop. And then Enjolras gets to her feet and works the reel, winding it off the bobbin and into an even hank, and without the strain to her arms that she'd suffered the first time. While she does that, R puts the spare bobbin onto the wheel and starts spinning again, no time to catch their breath with the mounds of straw still looming around them, reminding them of how much work there is to do and how short the night will be.

It feels good, though, to stand at R's side and work with her in complementary rhythms, the hum of the wheel and the squeak of the reel, instead of only bearing witness as R labors alone to save Enjolras's life.

When the hank is wound, R is halfway to filling the second bobbin. Enjolras takes the opportunity to take her weight off her feet for a moment, sitting at her side and handing her straw again. It makes the work go steadier, makes the bobbin fill faster.

Enjolras worries her lip between her teeth as R spins, frowning down at her knees and the scatter of straw across the floor before her. "R," she says, and hears the hitch in R's treadling, the soft sound of acknowledgment that seems all she's going to get, while R is concentrating on the work at hand. "Why... Why are you here?"

R stops treading entirely, just lets the wheel spin down to a stop and the twist build up in the thread. "I told you," she says after a moment, and Enjolras glances up to find her watching her, her gaze steady and heavy. "I've been seized with a terrible pity."

Enjolras huffs out a breath that's more amusement than annoyance, though she wouldn't admit to it if R asked. "You have not."

"No?"

"How did you even know I was here again? I thought the first time was an accident."

"A happy accident." R starts treadling again, bringing the wheel back up to speed. She doesn't give an answer beyond that, and Enjolras bites back impatience. There's work for her to do, anyway, the second bobbin nearly full and ready for her to reel off, and it's easy to let her irritation fade when she looks out at all the straw they still have left, and looks down at R's hands, working deft and dextrous to draw each stalk out into thin, luminous thread.

They're nearly finished with the first pile of straw, the hanks of thread piling up in the far corner and Enjolras has to keep looking at them and reminding herself that they've already done as much work as they had the entirety of the first night, when R speaks without lifting her gaze from the thread growing between her fingers, and without losing her rhythm on the treadle. "Tell me," she says quietly. "If you weren't here being made a slave for the king, if your father weren't such a fool, what would you be doing?"

"It's the middle of the night," Enjolras points out, pragmatic. "I'd be asleep, of course."

R's grin flashes, as bright as the gold slipping through her hands. "More generally, then."

Enjolras is quiet a moment, disliking her answer. But R asked, and avoiding unhappy truths doesn't make them any happier, or less truthful. "I'm a miller's daughter," she says, and is grateful to have the task of tying off the hank at the reel and twisting it up to occupy her hands, and give her an excuse not to meet R's eye. "I don't know any trade but that."

R stops the wheel and turns to her. She takes the finished hank out of her hands and looks down at it, studying it like she hasn't seen a dozen others come off her wheel already this night. "You could take one of these for yourself, you know," she says, quietly offered. "How should a king know how much thread a roomful of straw can turn into? You could take one for yourself and never have to worry about a trade again." R lifts her gaze to Enjolras. Her eyes are luminous, still deep but light-dappled. Enjolras thinks, distantly, that a person could lose themselves in those eyes, could drown in them. "And if you did? If you took one hank for your own, as payment for your labor, what then would you do with yourself?"

"Leave," Enjolras says, with no need for thought. "There's a whole world out there, and I've seen none of it. I'd like to."

R smiles, slow and warm as sunlight on a summer's day. "Perhaps someday I'll come upon you outside these stone walls, and I can show it to you."

And that warms her, too, a slow, growing warmth in the center of her chest. Enjolras considers it all through the next bobbin, and as she's tying off the next hank, she glances sidelong at R and ventures, "You needn't wait for happenstance. My father's mill is just outside the city walls. It's difficult to miss."

R's eyes dance, mischief and happiness combined. "Would you have me steal you away, like a changeling in the night?"

"No. I'd steal myself away." It feels too bold, too daring. But in these solid walls, with only R there to hear her dream about things that cannot be, it feels possible. "But I'd have you there."

R makes a sound, almost a hum, almost a " _Huh_ ," as though Enjolras has given her something to think about, and stops the wheel to move the thread along the flyer's hooks, and then sets it back into motion. She doesn't say any more than that, but she casts sidelong glances at Enjolras all through the rest of this bobbin, and the next.

*

"Tell me something," Enjolras says, in the dark, close hours of the night when it feels as though the whole world is made up of nothing but them and the wheel and the walls and the straw. "Tell me something true."

R looks up from the wheel. Her eyes are as bright as the gold of her thread. She considers Enjolras a moment. "I'll do you one better," she says, and beckons Enjolras over from the reel, where she's halfway through winding the next hank. "I'll tell you something secret."

*

Enjolras twists the last hank together just as the lamp is guttering out and the sounds of the palace stirring start to reach them, even through the heavy door and thick walls. She rubs at her eyes and looks over their work, piled up against the far wall. The chamber feels bigger and emptier, without the piles of straw to fill it up.

"Thank you," she says to R, as she's busying herself greasing the wheel again, though Enjolras wouldn't have bothered. She'd have let the king tend to his own tools. "You've saved my life twice now and I don't-- I don't know--"

R waits, but Enjolras doesn't know how to finish the sentence. She's tired enough to sway on her feet and she just wants to sleep, and to be done with this place and the king and his tests. After a moment, R smiles. "I put so much work into keeping you alive last time," she says, "I couldn't very well let it all be undone by standing idly by tonight, could I?"

"You could have. You didn't." Enjolras reaches out. They've been working side by side all night, but the distance between them seems to yawn open, as wide as a chasm. She clasps R's shoulder and squeezes it, and feels it move beneath her hand as R takes a swift breath. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," R says back, soft and a little rough. She rises and stretches her back out. "Get some sleep while you can. Give the king hell when he comes. He deserves it."

Enjolras smiles, but only softly. "It seems safer not to test the limits of his patience, or his clemency."

R only snorts and places a hand on the wall, just next to the door. "You've filled his coffers twice now. He can afford a bit of clemency." She tips her head toward the wall behind Enjolras, where all the bundles of thread are lined up, neat and orderly. "You really should take one of those for yourself, you know. I won't tell if you won't."

Enjolras turns her head to follow the gesture. When she turns back, refusal already upon her lips, R is gone. Enjolras walks up to the wall and lays her hand upon it, just where R had. It's solid and unyielding but, she thinks, just a little bit warm, like it's holding onto the warmth of R's hand.

Enjolras curls her fingers in against her palm, doing the same, and settles down to try to sleep before the king comes to decide her fate.

*

The king arrives like thunder, with the deafening resound of the bar lifting from the door and the heavy thud of his boots as he strides in.

Enjolras's eyes are on the door, the solid metal of it, the heavy bar across it, and she remembers R saying, _I could, maybe,_ about opening it, remembers the wry lilt to her voice as she'd said _your iron still bites_ and how she'd looked the first night, ancient and distant and strange, how she'd given Enjolras a letter to call her by instead of a proper name and Enjolras had thought _names have power_ all unbidden, how she slid through stone as easily as Enjolras might stride through open air. She's putting things together, crafting a picture, and she scarcely notices it when the king addresses her directly.

"Sorry?" She stands up, but leans against the wall so she won't wobble with exhaustion. "I worked all night. I'm very tired."

The corners of the king's mouth pinch with displeasure. But she has a wall of gold glittering at her back to assuage him, so he lets the affront go and only smiles, sharp and at least half insincere. Avarice glints in his eyes. "Your loyalty shall be remembered," he says, and waves a hand, and the guards come forward to escort her home once more.

She doesn't protest, only lets them lead her stumbling out, and when they've seen her home and taken their leave, she ignores her father's sharp questions and staggers through the house to fall face-first into bed and sleep half the day away.

*

The third time the king's guards come, Enjolras is prepared, with slender iron tools sewn into the lining of her stays, so she might never be caught without them.

The third time, she sees them riding up the road through window and she drops the sack of grain in her arms and runs, scrambling out across the fields behind the mill with her heart thundering as loud as the hoofbeats chasing after her.

The third time, she doesn't walk into the king's audience chamber, she's hauled in, a guard on either side of her with unyielding grips on her arms, keeping her upright as she twists and claws and fights for freedom. They drop her unceremoniously before the king's dais and she lands in a sprawl, but picks herself up enough to glare at him upon his throne, and to spit at his feet.

"I have done all you asked of me, and I will do no more," she snarls up at him. "Take your gold and do with it what you wish, but I will not be dragged from my homeagain to act as your slave! I'd sooner you take me to the executioner's block than back to your damned spinning wheel."

"Such a mouth you have," the king tuts, in a tone like someone reprimanding a favored child, not at all like a proud king speaking to one who'd defied him. "Never you fear, soon you shall not have to lift a finger ever again, if you wish." He comes down off the dais, his cloak sweeping out behind him, and walks a circle around her like he had the first time, like she's a calf at market. "I have only one more boon to ask of you, my dear."

She flinches back at the endearment, staring at him. "I will do you no boon."

"Just once more," he says, still in that voice dripping with false sincerity, like he's speaking to someone he cares about or who cares for him, rather than Enjolras, who would claw his eyes out if he gave her half the chance. "Do this one thing for me and I'll make you my bride, and you'll never want for anything again."

The shock of it, of what he's proposing, knocks all the air from her lungs, leaves her reeling and breathless and gaping. "I am not marrying you."

"Don't even think of it as a boon. Think of it as a dowry. You're lucky, really. Most girls spend years laboring over their dowries, and you need only spend a single evening." His smiles glitters, as brilliant as the jewels in his crown, and just as cold and merciless. "And yours will make you a queen."

"I am not marrying you!"

"I'll get your father's blessing, of course," he says casually, and her stomach clenches into a knot because she knows what he really means is, _I'll force you; we'll compel you together._ "We'll do this properly."

It takes her a moment to find her voice, pushing past the horror and revulsion. "I'll go to the executioner's block before I'll stand at the altar with you," she manages at last, harsh and defiant.

He is unmoved. He sidles in close, one hand on her waist. It must look like a lover's embrace from a distance, but she recognizes it for the threat it is. She trembles with the urge to take his hand in hers and wrench a finger back and listen to him howl when she breaks it. "That can be arranged, of course," he says, his voice gone low and venomous, all pretense dropped because there's no one else close enough to hear. "But I don't think it's true. A fox in a snare will chew off its own leg, to save its life. Even the basest creature will choose to endure agonies, rather than choose death." His smile spreads, sickening. "And you will be queen. What agony is that?"

She looks him straight in the eye, no more than a hand's span between them, and says very clearly, very deliberately, "I will do nothing for you."

"Oh, but you will." He grins at her, showing his teeth, and she abruptly thinks that she knows how the deer feels, staring down the wolf's fanged growl. "You will do as you king and your husband commands you."

And then she's certain of his intentions. He doesn't mean to make her a wife or a queen, he only means to marry her to make his rule over her complete, so he can keep her spinning and filling his treasury as much as he likes, whenever he likes. Why drag her from her house when he can move her into the palace, instead, and have her at his beck and call from dawn to dusk and back again? She'll be a slave in truth.

"Try me," she says, her jaw notched up, and stares him down until he breaks away.

It's too much to hope that he relents, of course. He only turns away and looks to the guards, says, "Take her to her chamber," and Enjolras is seized once more, and led off.

When they open the chamber door and push her inside, she staggers, then catches herself and gapes. It's a far larger room than any she's seen yet, except perhaps for the king's audience chamber. It's as big as a ballroom, a vast, open space with a spinning wheel and a reel at its center and mountains of straw around it, more than an entire harvest would yield.

She starts laughing, wildly, hysterically. The guards spare her a discomfited glance, then leave her, and bar the door from the outside. Enjolras drops to the floor and buries her face in her hands and laughs until she thinks she might be sick.

Even if she cared about pleasing the king, even if she wanted to try, she could never finish all this in a single night. He might have spared her his threats, because he sentenced her to die the moment he decided on the magnitude of this task.

That makes it easy, then. She'll wait until the evening has grown later and the palace has settled down for the night, and she'll retrieve her hidden tools from her stays, and she'll set the door off its hinges and escape while she can, and she'll run as far away from this damned city as he legs will carry her.

"This really is verging on the ridiculous, you know."

Enjolras lifts her head, somehow both surprised and not to see R there, hip cocked, head tilted, watching her with a smile playing about the corners of her mouth.

"Don't take this amiss," Enjolras says, dry, "but it's really not by choice."

R's smile quirks, wide and more crooked. "You wound me," she answers, equally droll. And then she glances about the chamber and laughs with the same tinge of hysteria that's overtaken Enjolras. "Well, he does think highly of us, doesn't he?" She pushes up her sleeves and moves towards the wheel. "There's no time to waste, then, I suppose--"

Enjolras jolts to her feet. " _Don't you dare._ "

R goes still, then glances back at her, one eyebrow lifted. "Pardon?"

"Don't," Enjolras snaps again, shaking with the fury that she's bottled since the moment she saw the guards riding down the road to her father's mill. "I'll not lift a finger for him, and I won't have you doing it either."

R turns to face her squarely. There's something fiery in her gaze, blazing almost as hot as Enjolras's rage, but there's bewilderment and incomprehension behind it, too. "Sorry," she says, "do you _want_ to die?"

"Better that than being forced to wed him! I'd sooner lay down upon the executioner's block and put the axe into his hands myself than bind myself with vows to that-- that _horrible man_."

R looks at her for a long, long moment, expression unreadable. Enjolras starts to frown and to demand, _What?_ , but before she can, R says. "I can give you a third option."

Enjolras can only blink at her, at first. When she says, "What?" this time, it comes out softer, less snappish, less demanding and more entreating.

"Trust me," R says, and spreads her hands wide. Sparks jump between her fingers and build into a glowing, spinning ball between her hands. In an instant it goes from a candle's flicker to bright as the sun, blinding. And then the sparks race from her hands out to every corner of the room and extinguish just as quick as they came.

Enjolras blinks the tears from her eyes, blinks them back into focus in the suddenly-dark chamber, and then draws a swift breath and reaches out to catch herself on the wall beside her.

Every piece of straw in the room is gone, and in their place are hundreds of skeins of gold thread, stacked in piles higher than her head, shining so warmly that the whole room is filled with their radiance. And R, who had been standing before her, is gone.

Enjolras spins, but she's alone in the room. She sucks in a breath and shouts to the air, "This is _not what I wanted!_ ", but the only response she receives is one of the mounds near her shifting and sending a small avalanche of perfectly-wound hanks tumbling down to sprawl at her feet.

She kicks at one nearest her, then drops down to sit on the floor, arms folded, temper boiling.

She waits, growing more furious by the moment, until enough time has passed that it must be late, when the palace will be quiet and any guards sleepy. And then she fishes out the tools she hid inside her stays, drops down to her knees beside the hinge side of the door, and sets to trying to work it open.

It's a less futile task than going at it with improvised utensils made from spinning wheel parts, but it's still frustrating work with only a slim chance of success. An hour passes, by her reckoning, and then a second, and her tools scrape between the stone of the wall and the iron of the door, but if she's making any progress at all, she can't tell it from inside the room.

The sound of the bar unexpectedly scraping against the door, far too early for it to be morning, makes her scramble back just in time to avoid being hit by it as it swings open. A guard steps inside, scowling fiercely at her, and demands, " _What_ is all the racket coming from--"

He stops, his eyes going wide as saucers as he looks over the room. Enjolras swears and picks herself up to her feet, and starts to bolt for the door while it's still open. But the guard catches her easily, and holds her back. "Eager, are you?" he asks, and laughs like it's all a great joke. "Never you fear, morning will come soon enough, and the king with it. It'll come faster if you stop messing about with the door and get some sleep."

She only barely manages to restrain herself from saying something unwise. It takes everything in her to make herself go still, to make herself seem calm. She forces a smile that feels like a grimace and speaks words that taste like bile on her tongue. "I've completed the task presented to me," she says, fighting against nausea as she makes herself play the part of a lady, an obedient daughter and willing bride. "You might show me to a proper bed, instead of making me sleep on the floor like a beggar. I've earned my place in the palace, and a bed at least."

The guard glances about the chamber and seems to consider it. But after a moment, he says, "That's for the king to decide, and there's no one up at this hour to ready a chamber for you, anyway." He gestures towards the mountains of spun thread with his chin. "Seems to me you've got a pallet fit for a queen, anyways," and shuts the door on her once more.

She'd curse herself for her hasty tongue earlier, for being too quick to declare her defiance before the king when she could have played a more patient game, and feigned willingness, and had herself a bedchamber rather than a cell, and an easier escape. But even the thought fills her with such disgust that she's not sure she could have made a convincing show of it, anyway, and it had never occurred to her to presume that she might have R's assistance a third time.

She doesn't sleep. She tries throughout the night to get the door off its hinges, if quieter than she had been before, and when her tools have dulled and twisted and still achieved nothing, she paces the length of the room and occasionally scoops up a hank of thread to hurl at the wall in a fit of fury. She talks to the air, hoping somehow, impossibly, R might be able to hear, alternately muttering her rage at being forced into this by someone she'd considered an ally and imploring her for anything she might be able to do to get her out of this chamber before morning.

The chamber offers her no answer but the soft echo of her own voice and the glimmer of the gold in the lamplight, hard and uncaring of the fate it's forced upon her.

*

In the morning she's led to a proper bedchamber, and then servants and maids descend upon her. She's dressed in finery she never could have dreamed of wearing, swathed in fabrics and trims so expensive she'd feel anxious just touching them, on any other day. There's petticoats and hoops and stays whose boning feels as unyielding as the stone walls around her, and a gown made of miles and miles of gold silk. Enjolras sees it when they bring it in and starts laughing wildly because of course he would, of _course_.

She's decorated with jewels until she feels twice as heavy as she ought to, and glitters every time she moves. She feels like a doll, trussed up and made up, maids pulling her hair up into an elaborate, fashionable style and rubies set in gold hanging about her throat and in her hair and from her wrists. But when they've finished and the maids give her a hand mirror to survey their work, she thinks she looks like a flame, all gold and red and ferocity set in the line of her jaw, and that feels right.

They bring her food, with winking jokes about needing her energy for the day ahead of her, and they're right but not in the way they mean. She finally, finally convinces her attendants to give her some peace while she eats, and in the privacy of her empty bedchamber, she slips the knife from her breakfast into the dimity pocket tied beneath her gown, and prays that no one will notice its absence.

She keeps her hand closed tight around it as they lead her from the bedchamber, through the palace halls, to the chapel where the walls soar up far overhead and colored light filters through the windows and there are hundreds of faces gathered before her, staring at her, at the miller's daughter who's come to wed the king.

The surety of the knife's handle in her grip is the only thing that keeps her steady, keeps her face blank and her steps even, when everything in her wars between dueling desires to kick off the fancy slippers they put her in and run, and to throw herself at the king and end this all here and now, before it can go any further or get any worse.

The press of people come to witness the ceremony will stop her if she tries to run. The guards will kill her if she lifts a hand against the king.

She can bide her time. She can wait, like the fire banked down to glowing coals, she can fool them with a calm surface and wait to strike until the moment is right, when the wedding is done and the king thinks he's won, and they retire away from all these eyes.

She'll do what needs to be done, until then. She'll say what needs to be said and let no one know how abhorrent each word is. She'll vow her life to the king if it means she can put an end to this for good.

The king waits for her at the end of the long aisle down the chapel, dressed in all his finery. Enjolras doesn't falter. She lets her feet carry her towards him, watches the distance between them shrink, and resettles the knife in her grasp.

He smiles at her when she comes to stand before him, brilliantly, expertly playing his part. "My love, you look radiant," he says to her, loud enough for those around to hear, so they'll know him for the doting husband-to-be.

She nearly loses her composure at the endearment, but she holds her purpose firm in her mind, and it steadies her. She smiles back, plays her part in this charade, dips a deferent curtsy and tips her head forward like she's bashful.

It helps to shield her expression from him, as well, which is all for the best.

"Shall we?" he asks, and holds his arm out to her. And to everyone watching it must look mannerly and kind, but Enjolras is standing half a step before him and she sees the iron in his gaze, the threat of danger if she lets her mask slip, and doesn't play along.

She swallows down the bile in her throat and reaches a hand out to lay it on his arm, so they might walk together up to the altar to be wed.

There's no sound, no warning, no doors being thrown open dramatically. But before she even touches the king's sleeve, a voice calls out, louder than it ought to be, "A moment, Sire, if you please," and Enjolras doesn't know whether to laugh with giddy relief or scream her frustration.

Everyone turns to stare at the figure striding up the aisle, ragged and barefooted. "I have some unsettled business with your intended," she says, and her voice is pitched toward the king but her gaze is fixed square on Enjolras.

Enjolras is near enough to the king to hear the furious breath he hisses out through his teeth, and to see the muscle in his jaw jump as he attempts to master his reaction and keep his facade in place. It only takes a moment, and then he smiles at R, like a wolf. "A wedding is no place for matters of business. You may settle your affairs tomorrow. Today is a day for celebration."

R's smile is just as sharp, just as false. She's nearly at the altar now, but she doesn't drop her voice. It resonates out, for all to hear. "You may regret that choice, if you insist upon it. Your bride has a price to pay me, for services rendered. Would you blindly pledge your troth to a woman who's indebted to another?"

Enjolras stares at her, only scarcely managing not to gape in outrage. The king looks at her, smile still fixed firmly in place, though the ease of it has gone. The strain is showing. "My love," he says, strain in his voice, too, "what does this creature speak of?"

Enjolras doesn't look at him. Her gaze is fixed upon R, and she couldn't move it if she tried. "I honestly have no idea," she tells him, and there's an edge to her voice that's not meant for the king. She wants to scream at R, wants to beat at her with her fists, wants to shout _I didn't ask you for this I didn't want it why would you force this on me_ , wants to snarl _You asked for no price and I agreed to none, you did this in spite of all I asked of you,_ wants to cry _Why would you wait until now to betray me, I'd have rather you'd left me to die than this_.

R looks at her like she can see everything Enjolras wants to say written there on her face. And there's something there on R's that answers her, but Enjolras doesn't know how to interpret it. She gets a flash of memory, though, of R's eyes bright and intent on her the night before, of the way certainty had resounded through her voice like a bell as she'd said _Trust me_.

Enjolras doesn't know how to, but the look in R's eyes now is the very same, and it silences any protest that she might have spoken. She waits, scarcely breathing, to find out what game R is playing at.

And R must be able to read that on her, too, because as soon as she thinks it, R's smile widens and loses all its pretense. And then she looks away from Enjolras, and turns instead to the king, to face him squarely. "You didn't think your bride was born with such a talent, did you?" she demands. "A mortal woman, spinning straw into gold? It's a fey gift, and our gifts always bear a price."

All the false pleasantness has fallen from the king's expression. His face is as hard as iron, as unyielding as stone. "Name it," he snaps, and the hair along Enjolras's nape prickles. There's danger lurking in that tone, just waiting to be loosed.

"An even exchange. I gave her a gift of the fey." R glances at her then, sidelong, but only for an instant. "She must give me a gift in return, to take back with me. Something of equal value to what she was given."

"Speak your price, goblin," the king snarls, danger simmering up to the surface, ready to spill over. "Enough of these fey tricks. State it outright and we'll be done with it."

R hums thoughtfully, makes a show of considering it. "Of equal price to a wealth of gold at your fingertips? Well. That must be something valuable, indeed." She tips her head, shrugs, feigning insouciance. "A child is traditional."

_"No,"_ Enjolras says at the same time as the king, though she's certain his protest is meant for the thought of relinquishing his heir, while hers is abject horror at the idea of lying with the king, of getting a child with him.

R's eyes burn as she fixes them on the king, the pretense of a smile dropped. "No? Is that price too dear for your wealth, your bride, your crown? Perhaps I should take those from you instead--"

"No!" the king gasps, even more wild-eyed than at the thought of losing his own child.

"No." R's voice drips ice. Her face is like a statue's, carved in lines of disdain. "You know, there are less kind spirits who would have waited until the child was born, and come in the night to spirit it away, and left a changeling in its place. They wouldn't have been so kind as to _ask_." She comes forward, one slow, stalking step at a time. She's small and ragged, and the king himself edges backwards at her approach, and Enjolras has to bite back a delirious laugh. "Not your child, then," R murmurs, low and sinister. "Not your wealth. Not your crown. Your bride, then, if you'll leave me nothing else."

"No," the king says a third time, and Enjolras says nothing at all.

Sparks dance across R's fingertips and the king takes another step back, turning ashen. "A gift for a gift, from our land to yours. If my price is not met, then I'll take back the gift, and the bride you earned with it."

"R," Enjolras breathes, her heart hammering against her breastbone.

R looks at her. She looked fierce as she was advancing on the king, like she'd blow the palace apart and rip stone from stone with the force of her wrath. But when she catches Enjolras's eye, she looks mischievous, and Enjolras can breathe again. The sparks that had been flickering on R's fingertips spiral up her arms and wink out, one by one.

"Then again," R says, and her voice is all at once as smooth as honey, her eyes as warm as a fire glowing in the hearth. "I am, after all, a lenient sort. I suppose it wouldn't be gallant of me to punish you, when it's your intended who's refused to pay my price." She reaches out, lays a hand on Enjolras's jaw, and Enjolras loses her breath once more. "I'll give you a clue, to make it fair: there's one way to compel me to leave without my prize. I'm feeling generous, so how's this: I'll give you three days to find it, if you wish to keep your freedom."

_You know I don't want this_. Enjolras's scream batters against her mind, but she can't find her voice to speak the words. _You know I want anything but to stay. You know I know your damned riddle. Why are you doing this?_

R meets her gaze and holds it, for a moment that feels like it stretches and becomes infinite. "Three days," she says again, as though Enjolras might need reminding. "But if you fail, then I'll snatch you away to the land of the fey, and no king of this realm shall stop me."

And then, finally, Enjolras thinks she understands, and she meets R's eyes, and she smiles.

*

"My love," the king says, the words bitten out as though he loathes the endearment as much as she does. "We will have our scholars study every book on goblins and their deals, we will consult with anyone who might understand this horrible creature's riddle--"

"It's no riddle," Enjolras says, serene in a way she hasn't felt in weeks. In her whole life. She feels like the eye of a whirlpool, a calm center while everything whips about into a frenzy around her. She feels strong, and sure in a way that's foreign to her, too. "It's her name."

For a moment, the king stares at her as though he suspects she has lost her wits. "I beg your pardon?"

"Names hold power. If you wish to compel the fey to do something, you must learn their name, their true name. They cannot refuse, if you speak it to them."

The king's face brightens, going avid and eager. "We will discover it," he says, and it sounds like an oath and a threat all at once. He clutches at Enjolras's hand, the picture of a devoted nearly-husband, and Enjolras pushes down the urge to shake him off of her. "No one will steal you from me, I swear it. And certainly not that terrible creature."

Enjolras is scarcely listening. She lets him go about his plans, sending out scholars and scouts to search every library and interrogate every peasant, until they've learned the name they need. Let him spend his resources on the search; she's thinking instead of a night not so long ago, of stone walls close around them and the hum of the wheel a counterpoint to the creak of the reel. She's remembering the way R's eyes had shone in the lamplight, the sharp curve of her smile, the promise _I'll tell you something secret_. The brush of her lips against Enjolras's ear and the shiver that had run down Enjolras's spine as she'd done so, breathed softly like something precious passed between them.

"My love?" The king's voice draws her back, to the room that is decorated with far more finery but that feels just as much a prison as the barren cells had, to the way he's frowning in front of her, his mouth pinched in an unhappy line. "You are elsewhere tonight." The way he says it makes it a condemnation.

"Forgive me," she says without inflection. "I am only preoccupied by my distress, of course." She rises, shakes out the heavy skirts she's been dressed in. "You'll excuse me, I'm sure. I'm feeling quite unwell after this turn of events."

His expression twists with distaste even as he waves a hand at her, dismissing her. "You needn't fret," he adds, though, as she makes her way across the room, taking the leave he's granted before he can decide to rescind it. "I won't let some goblin steal you from me."

"Of course," she says, and once she's back in her bedchamber, she strips out of the fine gown and changes into her own plain dress.

She keeps the knife in her pocket, though, and wedges a chair against the door, both safeguards in case the king decides to avail himself of a husband's rights before they've even been wed. And when at last she sleeps, she dreams she's drowning in a sea of gold and jewels, suffocating her with their weight.

*

For two days, the king is too preoccupied with his search to have much time to spare for her, and the reprieve feels like a breath of air, sudden and shocking. She endures her maids, when they come each morning and insist upon dressing her in finery fit for a queen, though she strips off the jewels as soon as they've gone. She can't bring herself to walk about with a veritable fortune casually draped around her neck and dripping from her wrists and sparkling in her hair. Her father could have supported his mill for a year on the price of just one gem.

The only thing she keeps is the braided bracelet from R, glittering gold around her wrist. It had seemed impossibly dear before, but now it seems almost plain in comparison to the silks and brocades she's dressed in, and it seems a comfort. She finds herself in idle moments with her hand wrapped around it, fingers pressed into the gold until it warms with her body heat and the texture of the wheat has made indents on her fingertips.

As the second day wears on past evening, Enjolras's solitude is broken by the king's arrival, unannounced and bursting into the drawing room sudden enough to make Enjolras jump, and her heart leap into her throat.

"They've found it," he says, wild-eyed, voice rasping. She slides back as he comes into the room, moving toward her. "The creature's name. We've learned it."

Enjolras is drowning again. She has to fight to draw air into her lungs. "Have you?" she says, and it's a struggle to keep her voice even, her face impassive.

"There's stories of a goblin in the far hills, one who likes to make deals and steal children. Rumpelstiltskin, she's called."

"That's a strange name, isn't it," she manages to say, choking on her voice.

The king makes a dismissive gesture. "One can't expect such creatures to have proper names."

"Of course not," she says, flat and without any affect at all.

"Listen, my love." He comes over to her and awkwardly pats her hand, like he saw someone do that once and decided that's how normal people comfort each other. "We must wait until the time is right. She'll try to trick you like the fey always do, but you mustn't let her. Don't speak a word to her if she comes to you before tomorrow, and don't let her know we've learned her name. We'll do it in the audience chamber, with witnesses there to seal the bargain, so she'll have to honor her word."

"Witnesses," Enjolras says, and pulls her hand out from beneath his, so they both might abandon the pretense of giving and receiving comfort. "Yes. An inspired idea, your Majesty." She won't call him by endearments. She can't. Her voice withers and dries up at the very thought of it. But she doesn't think it's necessary, not here where it's just the two of them. She's never allowed him any illusions about her interest in this arrangement.

He seems pleased, at least, by her compliment, and she lets him have that. She's watching the sky through the window, fading to cobalt as evening turns to night, and watching the oil in the lamp slowly burn down, marking out each hour that brings them nearer and nearer to tomorrow, when R will return.

*

She half expects that R will do as the king predicted and come for her in the night, or in the early hours of the morning. She almost hopes she will, so they might drop this charade and speak plain with one another, and so they might forgo this ridiculous performance before the assembled courtiers of the king's court.

But R doesn't come, and so Enjolras rises and readies herself. When her maids reach for a gown in her wardrobe, she stops them, says, "No. The golden one," and ignores their protests that she couldn't possibly be seen at court in the same gown twice in so short a span.

"The gold one," she says again, and doesn't relent until they exchange looks between themselves and sigh and take the gold gown from the wardrobe instead.

And so she comes to the audience chamber dressed once more like a flame in gold and red, and feeling like one, burning hot and bright. The gathered courtiers stare, and some whisper behind their fans or behind their hands at one another, and she spares no attention for them at all.

The king awaits her upon his throne, and there's another, smaller throne beside his now that hasn't been there before. She stares at it as she drops into a curtsy before him, bile rising thick and bitter in her throat.

"Rise," the king says, and she lifts out of the curtsy. "Come." He sweeps a hand toward the empty throne beside him. "Take your place with me, my love."

She does as her king commands, feeling like an automaton as she moves, stepping up onto the dais, lowering herself down to sit upon the edge of the throne. It feels hard and cold and her heart beats like a caged bird within her chest.

_We're not even wed yet,_ she thinks desperately, fingers curled around the arms of the throne to keep her from flying back up out of it. _I don't belong here._

But when has the king ever cared about propriety, or the proper way of going about things? Certainly never, with her. And this display is meant for R as much as for his court, of course. He wants R to come and see them as a united front. He wants R to come and see her there, sitting in his throne, accepting her place at his side.

He doesn't understand her at all, nor R. Let him play his games, and see what it gets him.

The doors are left open, awaiting their final guest, and at midday R walks through them, looking every bit as ragged as she always has, but her shoulders are squared and her gait is purposeful and Enjolras thinks she looks fierce. She thinks she looks wonderful.

The king waits until R has come right up to the foot of the dais, and then, as he draws breath to speak, R speaks first. "The deal I made was with your intended," she says, and there's steel in her voice, whetted sharp to a blade's edge. "The price she pays for freedom must come from her as well. If anyone but her speaks my name, or tries to, I'll count it as a forfeit."

The king snaps his mouth shut. Enjolras can feel the anger coming off of him, like waves of heat from a fire.

Enjolras smiles.

R glances at her, then her gaze catches, and she doesn't look away. The corners of her mouth twitch in an answering smile, but she masters it and keeps her expression stern. "Well, my lady?" Enjolras flinches a little at the epithet, but it's a game they're playing, it's just a game. It's all false. "I shall allow you three tries, but the time has come. If you don't know it, or can't guess it, then I'll take my payment for the gifts I've given you."

Enjolras rises from the throne and comes down towards R, one slow step at a time. "Your name…" she murmurs, and they're very close. They could clasp hands easily, but Enjolras doesn't, not yet. She holds herself back.

Enjolras says, "You look like a girl I knew once in the village, growing up." A lie. She's never known anyone like R. "Her name was Rilia. Do you perhaps go by that name as well?"

On the dais, in his throne, the king hisses air through his teeth. His fingers clench on the arms of the throne until his knuckles have gone white and bloodless. Enjolras spares him no more attention than that, because R is smiling, and she's radiant with it.

"I'm afraid not," R says. "Rilia is not my name, my lady. You must try again."

Enjolras hums thoughtfully and paces a slow circle around R, making a show of looking her over. Her heavy skirts whisper and sigh as she moves. "I heard a story once, about a goblin in a woods," she says, and behind her on the dais, the king sighs as well. "And the goblin was named Rasela. Was that tale about you, perchance?"

The king's sigh turns to a strangled cry. Enjolras glances at him over her shoulder, finds him half up out of his seat, his face gone red, his eyes staring fury at her as though he'd incinerate her with a look, if he could. "What are you doing?" he hisses at her.

"Ah-ah-ah." R clucks her tongue. "I warned you before, sire. She'll have no help from you, or I'll take her off to the land of the fey right now and count myself satisfied. Or will you let her have her third guess?"

The king seethes, his complexion gone splotchy, his eyes bulging. But R just waits, implacable, until he lowers himself back down to the very edge of the throne. "Let her guess," he bites out, like it's taking all his effort not to scream the words. "My love, I do hope you remember--"

"My name is not Rasela," R says, speaking over him, drowning him out. Her voice is so warm. Her eyes seem to dance with humor and light. "You must try once more, my lady, or consider yourself forfeit."

Enjolras stands facing her directly, with her back to the king, and she smiles, slow and broad, so that only R can see. An answering smile turns up the corners of R's mouth and her hand twitches at her side, like she wants to take Enjolras's in it and leave now, last guess be damned. Enjolras wishes she would, even as she knows that they can't. They're so close, but they'll do this properly. With witnesses, as the king said, so no one may dispute the claim.

"You told me to call you R, when we first met," Enjolras says, holding her gaze. "And I think now perhaps you meant to mislead me. It is in the nature of fey to play tricks, is it not? I think your name doesn't begin with that letter at all."

"No," the king breathes behind her, and snaps, _"What are you doing?"_ They both ignore him. They're near enough to the end now.

"I've heard of women named Arynia, who go by the same nickname you do, because of how it sounds rather than how it's spelled."

R fights her smile back, tries to feign nonchallance as she says, "Is that your last guess, my lady?"

"No," the king says. "No!"

Enjolras doesn't look away from her. "It is."

And R's face lights up like dawning breaking across the sky. She keeps her voice controlled, though, as she says, "Then I am sad to say, my lady, that you have failed thrice now, and must come away with me, as our terms dictated." Her gaze slides past Enjolras, behind her, and her smile turns wicked, meant for Enjolras alone. She tips her head past Enjolras, towards where the king's throne sits at her back. "I will grant you leave to bid your intended farewell before we leave, if you wish it."

"Yes." Enjolras smiles back. "I do."

She wipes away her expression before she turns, facing the king and walking towards him. He's leaped to his feet now, though his hands still grip the arms of the throne, and he's shaking with an apoplectic fury as he watches her approach.

She leans in, like a woman bidding good-bye to the man she meant to marry, and keeps her voice low as she says to him, "If it's any consolation, her name isn't Rumpelstiltskin, either. It wouldn't have worked either way."

"You don't know that," the king snarls.

"I do."

"You didn't even try!"

"No," Enjolras says, and smiles now where he can see it. "I wouldn't have you think even for one instant that I wished to stay."

He stares at her, and she thinks that for the first time, he actually sees her.

"Take heart," she murmurs, leaning in. "You've enough gold in your coffers now to last through the end of your reign, if you're prudent with it. And the truth is, I could never do what you wanted, and I'd have thrown myself from the highest tower in the palace before I would, so you've lost nothing." She grasps his hand and squeezes it, and while it might look like a loving gesture to the rest of the assembly, there's a warning to her grip. "Play the doting husband-to-be whose bride was tragically stolen away by the fey. It's a compelling story, and will buy you sympathy, I'm sure. Use it. But don't come after us. The fey don't take kindly to their deals being reneged upon." Her grip tightens, hard enough that the pain starts to show on his face. "And there are, after all, all these witnesses."

She releases him then, and turns, and walks down to where R is waiting for her. Enjolras descends the steps of the dais and slips her hand into R's and says, "I'm ready."

R smiles and threads their fingers together, and they go. With R's hand in hers, the ground seems to fly twice as fast as it should beneath their feet. There are no doors to stop them, no guards, no iron to bar the way. In a few breathless moments they're out of the palace and lost amongst the bustle of the city, and a moment after that they've passed through the Western Gate and out into the farms and hills that surround the city.

Enjolras stops, then, when they're alone with nothing but grass and hills and road around them, tightening her fingers on R's. "Grantaire," she says, and R stops, and turns back to her, and laughs like she's at once surprised and delighted.

"You _do_ remember, then," R says, so happy that her smile reaches all the way up into her eyes. "I wondered, a little."

Enjolras pulls back a little, stung. "Of course I remember."

"Well." She shrugs, insouciant again. "It was very late. You were somewhat preoccupied. You might have been forgiven, if you'd forgotten."

"I remember your name, Grantaire," Enjolras says, not to prove the point but just for the way hearing it makes her whole face light up all over again. Enjolras tightens her hand on hers and smiles back, helplessly. "Are we really going to the fey lands?"

R hums a little, thoughtful. "Maybe someday, when you want to. But there's a whole world out there, and you said you wanted to see it."

Enjolras moves in towards R, one step and then another. The sun's high overhead, the sky as blue as a sapphire, but R is the brightest thing she sees. "Are you going to show it to me?"

"As much of it as you want," R says. "For as long as you care to have my company."

Enjolras makes a soft noise, like it's punched out of her. She brings her other hand up to grasp at a handful of R's hair and pulls her in and kisses her.

R's lips curve against hers as she leans into it, and then she has to break away because she's laughing, tipping her head back and laughing up at the sky like there's too much joy in her to contain. She leans in and presses a second kiss to the corner of Enjolras's mouth, then says, "Wait, before we go. There's one more thing."

Enjolras untangles her fingers from R's hair, but doesn't let go of her hand. R turns, pivoting on that point of connection, and stretches her other hand out towards behind them. Sparks dance on her fingertips, then leap off and dance spirals around one another as they race towards the city, and the palace like a jewel at its center, looming high over the city walls.

When R turns back to her, flexing her fingers, Enjolras is watching her, curious. "What did you do?"

"Me?" R looks up at her slyly, eyes glinting like gold. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all."

"Grantaire," Enjolras says, smiling, and R relents with a laugh.

"Well, between you and me..." R releases her hand so that she can loop her arm through Enjolras's and press up all along her side. She lifts up onto her toes to press a kiss to Enjolras's cheek, and her lips curve there against her skin. "I might have turned all his gold into straw."

Enjolras throws her head back and laughs and laughs and laughs, until it catches R up in it too. She catches Enjolras by the waist and kisses her a third time, both of them giddy and clutching at each other and laughing through it. Sparks leap from her fingers and onto Enjolras's, and when they walk together, each step that they take carries them a mile, and soon the city has shrunken to the size of a bauble behind them. A few more steps and even the high turrets of the palace have vanished and they stand at a crossroads with a golden sun overhead and a whole world stretched out before them, waiting to be seen.

"Pick a direction," R says, "and we'll see everything there is to see until the land runs out beneath our feet."

Enjolras closes her eyes, smiles, and chooses.

**Author's Note:**

> Opening Song: [ The Wheel Goes 'Round by GrooveLily ](https://groovelily.bandcamp.com/track/the-wheel-goes-round)  
> Closing Music: [ Gabriel Fauré - Pelléas et Mélisande - II. La Fileuse ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqJG3HYf4ng)


End file.
